Codemasters goes legal over stolen staff

Codemasters has accused of upstart Playground Games of stealing staff from the firm to create a new racing game.

In a writ for the High Court, Codies named 15 people who moved to Playground, having previously been given confidential access to information at the company, meaning the new dev had up to a year’s head start on its racing title: one of those 15 included is co-founder of Codemasters, Nicholas Wheelwright.

The firm now insists the situation has impeded the development of its own racing titles, and is now seeking damages and/or an account of profits from Playground’s in the timeline of its actions.

“Those employees constituted a ready-made top-rate racing games development team. Between them they had some 100 years of experience in creating, developing and producing first-class computer racing games,” the writ from the company writes.